Our holdings include hundreds of glass and film negatives/transparencies that we've scanned ourselves; in addition, many other photos on this site were extracted from reference images (high-resolution tiffs) in the Library of Congress research archive. (To query the database click here.) They are adjusted, restored and reworked by your webmaster in accordance with his aesthetic sensibilities before being downsized and turned into the jpegs you see here. All of these images (including "derivative works") are protected by copyright laws of the United States and other jurisdictions and may not be sold, reproduced or otherwise used for commercial purposes without permission.

December 1943. "Lynn Massman, wife of a second class petty officer who is studying in Washington, does the washing every morning." View full size. Medium-format negative by Esther Bubley for the Office of War Information.

April 12, 1910. "Chinatown after shooting." The Port Arthur teahouse at 9 Mott Street in New York's Chinatown during the tong wars between the Hip Sings and On Leongs. 5x7 glass negative, George Grantham Bain Collection. View full size.

October 1942. "Another B-25 bomber rolls off the final assembly line to join other ships in the outdoor assembly area. North American Aviation Inc. Inglewood, California." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Alfred Palmer.

October 1942. "Installing an engine at the Consolidated Aircraft Corporation plant. Fort Worth, Texas." View full size. 4x5 Kodachrome transparency by Howard R. Hollem for the Odffice of War Information.

Wild Bullet Slays a Watchman -- Waiter Is Wounded --
All the Beeves Caught or Killed.

The steer which caused the excitement in Fifth Avenue was one of eight which escaped from the yards of the New York Stock Company at Sixtieth Street and the North River. In the pursuit another man was wounded, a policeman was trampled on, and a delivery wagon was wrecked. The excitement began about 4 o'clock yesterday morning and did not end until five hours later, when the last steer was shot to death in Central Park. The steer which alarmed Fifth Avenue was one of the wildest of the lot, and it was a police bullet fired at it which went wild and killed George Beattie, night watchman of the building under construction at 24 East 55th Street. ... The steer, bleeding from wounds, turned into Fifty-Fifth Street, followed by a string of revolver-popping automobiles. ... According to stockyard authorities, about 200 short-horn Oregon steers were unloaded yesterday morning, consigned to various butchers in the city ...

Shorpy.com | History in HD is a vintage photo archive featuring thousands of high-definition images from the 1850s to 1960s. (Available as fine-art prints from the Shorpy Archive.) The site is named after Shorpy Higginbotham, a teenage coal miner who lived 100 years ago.